About Me

Originally a geologist by training, I now work as a museum professional. My passion is old photographs, the photographers who took them, the equipment and technologies they used, the people and scenes in the photos, and the stories behind them.

Based on an advertisement in Wellington's Evening Post dated 23 January 1940 and a battered instruction plate in the Tauranga Museum collection, I have deduced previously that at least one Photomatic photobooth, such as the well preserved original shown above from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, was exported to and operated in New Zealand.

I now have direct evidence of that. Margaret Parkes kindly sent me these images of two Photomatic portraits of her parents, probably taken on the eve of her father's departure for service overseas in the Second World War, possibly at the Centennial Exhibition.

I have a pair of prints of my mother and father taken in Wellington before his departure to WW2. To the best of my knowledge they were taken early in January 1940 as the troops boarded the ship on the 5th. My parents Errol and Catherine Morton were living in Taranaki so the time she was most likely to have visited Wellington was for his departure, although I see that the Centennial Exhibition was on at the time.

A detailed search in the online newspaper archives of the period shows that Photomatic Limited was formed in May 1937, shares in the company quickly being listed for sale by brokers in Auckland. In November that year, the department store of Hay's Ltd in Christchurch advertised the new Photomatic as the only one of its kind in the South Island, "a wonderful machine ... takes your photo, develops, prints, and FRAMES it ... in ONE MINUTE."

Between 11 June and 6 August 1938 Photomatic (Wellington) Limited were seeking "smart young ladies" and "smart youths" to apply in person for positions as attendants for Photomatic portrait-taking machines. The advertisement for 2 July 1938 described the booth as being located in Selfridge's Department Store, Cuba Street.

Then there is nothing until early 1940, when the company appears to have operated a Photomatic booth at the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. Various trade directories show the company operating from premises at 315 Cooke's Building, 58-60 Queen Street, Auckland Central in 1937-1938, from 182 Featherston Street in 1941, and at 23 Waring Taylor Street in 1948-1949, both in Wellington.

Which leaves us with a few questions that I hope we'll be able to answer some day. Why are there so few references to Photomatic booths in New Zealand? Were the booths hired out, complete with operaters, to franchisees in the various locations, or did the firm maintain control of each one? How many were there? Where did the instruction plate in the Tauranga Museum Collection come from, and where is the rest of the booth? How long did the firm remain in business? Were they really still going in 1948? Where are all the portraits taken in these booths? There must be many remaining in private collections, but I haven't been able to find any in public collections listed online.

There are few signs of Photomatic booths being exported to other parts of the world, but I found evidence that they were, somewhat bizarrely, in my own family photo collection. This photobooth portrait of my father was taken in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa in 1968, which is pretty late in context of the heyday of the American Photomatic. Although the silver card backing has no identifying marks indicating that it emanated from a Photomatic apparatus, the metal frame, card type and apparent method of manufacture are identical. It has occurred to me that it may have been produced from a refurbished Photomatic machine after the demise of the business elsewhere.

Lastly, I thought I'd direct readers to an article that appeared recently regarding an exhibit titled "445 Portraits of a Man" currently on display as part of "Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture," an exhibition showing at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Jersey until July. It's an extraordinary collection of Photomatic images, all of the same man, taken over three decades from the late 1930s until the 1960s. The man's identity and why the portraits were collected, remains a mystery.

If you haven't had enough of coin-operated machines after that, you may well find a few more among the remaining Sepia Saturday contributions this week.

Thursday, 17 April 2014

The Sepia Saturday image prompt this week shows a woman watering her artichokes while a man, presumably her husband, stands with a pipe firmly clenched in his mouth and holding a shovel. He's perhaps pretending that he's just finished the weeding, but is clearly not dressed for the task. My contribution to the meme this week is a group of servants, including gardeners and groundsmen, who may be in their best clothes, but they don't look quite as out of place in the garden.

In something approaching the manner popularised by fellow Sepians Tattered + Lost and Mister Mike, I will attempt a deconstruction and/or reconstruction of the occasion.

This early cabinet portrait mounted on plain card was a fortuitous purchase on eBay a few years ago, lucky in that such items often attract furious bidding which very quickly puts them totally out of my reach costwise, but if I remember correctly I was the only one to show any interest in this. It is unusual not only for the subject matter, a large group of servants from a big house, but also that the location and date are written on the card mount.

Quantock Lodge is a mansion built as a holiday residence in the Gothic revival style during the mid-19th century for Henry Labouchere, 1st Baron Taunton (1797-1869), and described by Nocolas Pevsner as "a large rather dull Tudor house ... Gothic Stables, a specially crazy Gothic Dovecote and a big Gothic Lodge." Although Baron Taunton's second wife inherited the estate on his death in 1869, his eldest daughter Mary Dorothy Labouchere (1842-1920) lived there after her marriage in 1872 to Edward James Stanley, D.L., J.P. (1826-1907), later a British Conservative politician from 1882 until 1907. By August 1879, when this photograph was taken, the Stanleys had a son and a daughter, both born at St George Hanover Square, London, and a second son was born on 30th August, also in London.

I've been unable to find records of a photographer named Bernard working in either Exeter or Somerset. However, there was a Daniel Bernard of Austrian origin living at 12 Smythen Street, Exeter in April 1881 who described himself as picture frame dealer. That he had links with Somerset is demonstrated by the birth of his two children at Bristol in 1875 and 1878. Bernard's use of the name "Prince Imperial Memorial" was particularly opportunisitic, considering that Napoléon, the Prince Imperial, had been killed in Zululand only a couple of months earlier, and the "Prince Imperial Memorial Fund" set up in mid-June.

Detail of Quantock Lodge servants

This group of servants - 10 male, 9 female and a young lad - is large, indicative of a fairly wealthy household, which the Stanleys certainly were. Mary's mother and paternal grandmother were members of the Baring banking family. The census record of Quantock Lodge, Over Stowey, Somerset for 3 April 1881 (p1 & p2), only 20 months after the photograph was taken, shows 21 servants - 8 male, 12 female - as well as a governess and a young boy, with three additonal male employees living in married quarters nearby. In order to compare the census list with the people we see in the photograph, I have extracted their details:

Name

Age

Occupation

1871--1891

Eleanor E. MAJOR

22

Governess

Annie REID

40

Butler's wife (Visitor)

Caroline FARLEY

49

Housekeeper

Emile WELLS

30

Cook

Elise REDFLEUR

31

Ladies Maid [sic]

Mary MAY

25

Nurse

Housekeeper, 1891

Thomas REID

45

Butler

Walter REID

37

Valet

William DAVIS

28

Under Butler

Thomas WALKER

30

Footman

James GRANDFIELD

25

Footman

Under Butler, 1891

Henry WATTS

32

2nd Coachman

James STACEY

23

Groom

George LUCAS

22

House Servant

Mary A. PRICE

26

Kitchen maid

Alice E. TOFFS

19

Kitchen maid

Elizabeth VINCENT

22

House Maid

Gerald A. ELLIS

8

Scholar (Nephew)

Clara PACKER

31

Head Housemaid

Hannah HUTCHINGS

28

Still Room Maid

Elizabeth WALTER

28

2nd Housemaid

Jane HOOPER

19

3rd Housemaid

Caroline THORNE

18

4th Housemaid

William ISTED

39

Head Coachman

Archibald BOUSIE

60

Head Gardener

Head Gardener, 1871

John MARSHALL

56

Head Gamekeeper

The boy was actually Mrs Stanley's nephew, Gerald Arthur Ellis, but I've included him in the extract because he is, rather oddly, listed among the servants. Gerald's father Major-General Sir Arthur Ellis was Equerry to the Prince of Wales, and Gerald himself became a Page to Queen Victoria.

I can't give an authoritative source for this, but I have the impression that census listings for such households generally show the servants in order of seniority. It is interesting to note that the head gardener had been there since 1871, while two of the servants were still working at Quantock Lodge a decade later in 1891. In those ten years Mary May had worked her way up from Nurse to Housekeeper, while James Grandfield had undergone a similar promotion from Footman to Under Butler.

The Butler and the Housekeeper, Quantock Lodge

The two central figures in this tableaux, also probably the oldest, are almost certainly the most senior male and female servants in the household, the butler and the housekeeper. The butler looks to be in his forties. Thomas Reid was shown as 45 in the 1881 census, but 46 or 47 when he died at Quantock Lodge in February 1884 - depending on source - and is therefore a good candidate. His wife Annie is described as a visitor in the census, and was therefore not a regular member of the household. After her husband's death, she continued to live nearby in Taunton, described in the 1891 Census is "living on her own means."

The housekeeper at Quantock House in April 1881 was Caroline Farley. She gave her age as 49, but I've been able to track her through the remaining census records from 1841 to 1901, and it appears that at the time the photograph was taken in the garden of Quantock Lodge in August 1879, Caroline was probably in her mid-fifties. The housekeeper in the photograph looks a little older than this, perhaps in her sixties, but there are no older women in the census list, so this may be Caroline Farley's predecessor - it's difficult to be sure.

The Valet, Quantock Lodge

Thomas' younger brother Walter Reid was also at Quantock Lodge in 1881, aged 37 and employed as a valet. Judging by his clothing, his age and the similarity of their facial features (in particular ears, nose and mouth), I think he may be standing in the back row, second from right, with his right hand resting with some degree of familiarity on the shoulder of a woman seated on the butler's right, and possibly his left hand on the shoulder of another young woman. Walter was the executor of his brother's will dated April 1884, in which he left a personal estate of £480. I've been unable to find any record of Walter after this date.

The Under Butler and the House Servant, Quantock Lodge

Judging by their clothing, their ages and their proximity in the lineup to the butler, I believe that the two young men standing in the back row, directly in line with the butler and the housekeeper, are probably the Under Butler (right) and male House Servant (left), listed in the 1881 census as William Davis (aged 28) and George Lucas (aged 22). George Lucas was an inmate of the Dorchester Union Workhouse at Fordington in 1871, his mother having died when he was very young.

The Two Footmen and the 2nd Coachman, Quantock Lodge

The double-breasted coats with large brass buttons worn by all three young men standing at the right hand end of the back row makes them likely to have been footmen and coachmen. In 1881 Thomas Walker (30) and James Grandfield (25) were the two footmen, while Henry Watts (32) was the Second Coachman. It is difficult to tell whether that is the order they appear in the photograph.

The Cook and the Head Housemaid, Quantock Lodge

Unfortunately these two are in a part of the photograph which has been overexposed, with a resulting loss of definition. From their clothing, seniority dictated by their position seated to the housekeeper, and their ages, I believe them to be the Cook (left) and the Head Housemaid (right). In 1881, these positions were filled by Emily Wells (30) and Clara Packer (31). I tracked down Emily/Emma Wells to the magnificent Petworth House in Sussex in 1871, where she was employed by the 2nd Lord Leconfield as a Still Room Maid, the most junior servant in the household.

The Governess and the Lady's Maid, Quantock Lodge

There are only two women dressed in dark clothing, both of them fairly young, and they must, I think, be the Governess and Lady's Maid. The young woman seated on the grass at the far left of the group has a substantial hat, and appears to be of an appropriate age to be the 22 year-old Governess, Eleanor E. Major. Ten years later she was working as a Governess to the family of her previous employer's sister, Mina Frances Ellis, and was still employed as a governess in 1901. The woman holding a dog on her lap may be the 31 year-old Elise Reafleur (or Redfleur), the Swiss-born lady's maid to Mary Stanley.

The Nursemaid, Quantock Lodge

Five months prior to the sunny summer morning when Monsieur Bernard visited Quantock Lodge, the Honourable Mrs. Stanley placed an advertisement in the Morning Post, a conservative daily London newspaper "noted for its attentions to the activities of the powerful and wealthy," looking for a "superior Nurserymaid to help in the care of two children (see below). Pregnant with her third child, she was obviously anticipating the extra work load. It would be nice to think that Mary May, the 25 year-old "Nurse" listed in the 1881 Census, who was still with the Stanleys ten years later at Quantock Lodge as housekeeper, came to them in response to this advertisement. My feeling is that she is seated at far left, between the butler and the governess.

Advertisement in the Morning Post, 18 March 1879

In 1898 Mary Ann May married the under-butler James Grandfield and the couple moved to Kensington where James found work, now as a butler. The 1901 Census shows the Stanley household without a butler. James was still working as a butler in London in 1911 and died in 1919, while Mary died in 1939.

The Kitchen and House Maids, Quantock Lodge

The three remaining women in the group, standing immediately behind the butler, housekeeper and cook, look to be in their early to mid-twenties, and could be either kitchen or house staff. Unaccounted for in the census are two kitchen maids, four house maids and a still room maid. Presumably some were either too busy to outdoors engaging in such frivolities as a photographic portrait (read camera-shy), or absent on the day.

The Head Gardener, Quantock Lodge

The man standing at the extreme left of the group may be the Head Gardener, Archibald Bousie, who lived with his family in the gardener's cottage on the estate. He was born on 9 March 1821 at Markinch, Fife, Scotland and, judging by the number of credits in The Flora of Forfarshire by William Gardiner, published in 1848, he was a very knowledgeable and active botanist as a young man. Mr Bousie was employed from c. 1848 by Henry Labouchere, Lord Taunton, as the head gardener in the famous gardens laid out by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton at Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire. He won numerous medals and prizes for his fuschias, rhododendrons, calceolarias, fancy pelargoniums, figs and desert apples in flower and fruit shows at the Crystal Palace, Royal Botanic Society and Royal Horticultural Society between 1855 and 1863.

After Stoke Park was sold in 1863, Bousie moved to Quantock Lodge where he worked in a similar capacity, first for Lord Taunton and later for his daughter and son-in-law, the Stanleys. He died at Over Stowey on 20 December 1910, aged 89 years, after having passed on the reins at Quantock Lodge to his son David Alexander Bousie.

The Head Gamekeeper and the Groom, Quantock Lodge

As we get further down the list, I feel on more shaky ground regarding identifications. The man with a large stick and an even more impressive beard seated on the grass is dressed as an outdoor servant, but I don't believe he can be the Head Coachman, so I think it more likely that he is a gardener or a gamekeeper. The 1881 Census shows one John Marshall, aged 56, Head Gamekeeper, living near Quantock Lodge and it seems likely this is him. The man seated at far right, holding onto a dark-coloured poodle, is probably the groom, shown in the census as James Stacey, aged 23.

The Young Lad, Quantock Lodge

Finally, we have the well dressed young lad sitting cross-legged in front of the housekeeper and the cook. There is only one boy shown in the census, Gerald Ellis, nephew of Mrs Stanley, but in August he would have been only six years old, and this chap looks to me to be around 9 or 10, at least. The Stanley's eldest son Henry Thomas Stanley was a year younger than Gerald, so it's not likely to be him either. I suspect that he was a local lad employed as a Hall Boy.

Of course I understand that most readers will have decided, probably well before getting to this point, that my IDs are at best tentative, and in the worst case, rather unlikely. My aim at putting this list out in the cybersphere is to generate some interest and possibly further information about the servants who worked, perhaps not straight away, but hopefully in due course.

For more gardening of the sepian variety, I can recommend visiting the other Sepia Saturday contributers.

Wednesday, 9 April 2014

This week's Sepia Saturday image prompt is all about buildings and town scenes. I'll be taking a closer look at some tintypes from my own family's collection, and an emerging story about a photographic studio in Chicago, Illinois. The building itself will only appear later in the article, so please bear with me.

Among the family photographs that my aunt and I have inherited are a series of four sixth-plate tintypes. The term "sixth-plate" refers to the size of the photograph, produced by cutting a full plate (8½" x 6½" or 216 x 165mm) into six, each measuring roughly (2¾" x 3¼" or 70 x 83mm). As with many such tintypes, the edges are roughly cut and the corners have been trimmed to make them easier to slip into photo album slots.

Detail of two six-plate tintype portraits of Leslie Payne

As is also commonly found with this format, they have no photographer's details or other distinuishing marks, but I can be fairly certain that the two almost identical portraits of my grandfather Charles Leslie Lionel Payne were taken in Chicago. He was born there in April 1892 and returned to England with his parents in mid- to late November that year, so would have been six or seven moths old at the time he parents took him to the studio. The two images appear at first glance to be of the same view. A detailed examination of the child in the pram reveals identical poses which I think we have to assume would be impossible to duplicate for two separate exposures.

Detail of two six-plate tintype portraits of Leslie Payne

Sharp-eyed readers will however have noticed subtle differences, which are more obvious in these two views of the pram's undercarriage. There is a considerable shift in the position of the rear axle in relation to the rim of the front wheel in the two images. How can this be if the two photographs were taken in the same split second, as evidenced by the child's pose? Well, the answer lies in a question of parallax, defined in the COD as the "apparent displacement of an object, caused by actual change of point of observation." This Wikipedia article has an animation which shows the effect very well.

In other words, the two portraits were indeed taken at the same instant, but from two slightly different positions. This was achievable with a multi-lens camera, such as the one shown above. Camera collector and very knowledgeable historian Rob Niederman points out that the noticeable vertical parallax, along with no perceptible horizontal parallax, suggests the second image was probably directly above the first on the original plate. The camera must have had at least a four lens set (1/9-tubes, using a 4¼" x 5¼" plate) or conceivably 9, 12 or 16 lens sets. He adds, "In summary, studio outfits were very adaptable in what you could do with them."

In the fourth portrait, an unidentified young man, smartly dressed and with a moustache, is seated in a studio with a painted backdrop.

Detail of backdrops in two six-plate tintype portraits

Examination of the painted backdrop (above left) shows similarities with that used in the two portraits of Leslie Payne. I have some reservations, but the similarity of the branches and knots in the tree trunks has more or less convinced me that they are the same backdrop, although perhaps touched up a little between the two sittings.

It seems likely therefore, given the similarity of features and their provenance, that all four tintype portraits were taken in the same studio. But who was the man with a moustache?

Leslie's parents Charles Vincent and Amy Payne had travelled to Chicago, Illinois from their home in Derbyshire, England in May-June 1891, very soon after their wedding. Accompanying them was Vincent's younger brother Frank Payne, and together they would join another brother Charles Hallam Payne, who had gone to Chicago to look for work a year earlier. Uncle Hallam had been working as a carpenter at the Pullman Car Works.

The moustachioed man is obviously not Charles Hallam and, by comparison with many other photographs in my collection, is not my grandfather Charles Vincent. I thought at first that it might be Frank (unfortunately we have no other photographs in the family collection with which to compare it), but Frank would have been only 18 years old at the time, so I think that is very unlikely. Perhaps he was a friend.

In a letter written to him on 12 January 1891 his father Henry Payne thanked Hallam for a ...

"... book of Pulman [sic]. I am glad to hear that Pulman does not go in for many hotels. Perhaps you will make a note of that."

This book, currently in the collection of my aunt, includes a number of photographs of Pulman's works and the town he built to house his workers, including the two shown above, all taken by photographer H.R. Koopman.

Employee's Pass for The World's Columbian Exposition, 1 June 1892

United Carpenter's Council Quarterly Working Card, Oct-Dec 1892

Some time after the arrival of his brothers all three found employment at the Chicago World's Fair, officially known as The World's Columbian Exposition. However, it appears that they were still living in Roseland - Lesley Payne's birth certificate shows that he was born at 10810 Curtis Ave, Roseland, Chicago on 9 April 1892.

Henry Ralph Koopman (1865-1944) operated photographic studio in Roseland, a suburb of Chicago, from 1884 until the early 1900s, offering a wide variety of formats at what he boasted was the "finest equipped photograph gallery in the vicinity."

This image of Koopman's Photograph Gallery at 11106 South Michigan Avenue, on the corner with 111th Street, was taken in 1886. The large windows and skylight on the side of the building indicate the position of the studio towards the rear. By the time the Paynes arrived in Roseland in 1892, where they lived only three blocks away from the gallery, Koopman had built himself a much grander three-story building with a studio on the third floor, although I've not managed to find a corresponding external view.

The cabinet portraits above were taken in the late 1880s to early 1890s in Koopman's studio, and demonstrate that he used a very similar style of painted backdrop to those seen in the tintypes, although I have been unable to match the specific backdrop used in the latter with any marked Koopman portraits.

This wonderfully evocative print from Koopman's archives preserved at the Pullman State Historic Site shows the photographer himself at work in the studio, capturing a portrait of his daughter Marie around 1895. He is composing the image on a ground glass screen at the back of a large format glass-plate studio camera, his head under a black cloth to exclude light. The lighting available from the large window and skylight can be moderated and diffused by the drapes hanging from the ceiling. A painted canvas backdrop is in place behind the seated girl, and a second rolled backdrop can be seen hanging above. There are a number of different items of standard studio furniture, including padded stool, side tables, cane chair, ornate screen, carpets and curtains, as well as a small stove to keep the studio warm and the clients comfortable.

There were many photographic studios in Chicago, and I even have a cabinet portrait of my great-grandfather Charles Vincent Payne taken at Harrison & Coover's downtown studio in August 1891. However, I don't believe there were many photographers operating in Roseland in the early 1890s, and I think it is very likely that all four tintypes were made there. However, until I find another portrait showing that identical painted backdrop, I can't be sure. To this end, I've saved a search for Koopman portraits on eBay in the hope that some will turn up in due course.